Ask HN: Where does a motivated 22 year old SWE student find freelance work? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Where does a motivated 22 year old SWE student find freelance work?

6 pointsindicud4 comments

I'm a 22 year old Software Engineering student based in Scandinavia who started writing code at the age of 15. I'm currently looking for freelance work, and aside from the typical websites such as Upwork, I really have no idea where to find any. Upwork and the similar freelancing sites are crowded with low-wage coders from India and other developing countries, and ime it's not easy to compete with them. I truly enjoy writing code and everything that comes with it, and I'd love to make some money as poor student.

I'm very comfortable with C, C++, Python, JavaScript (node.js, express.js,) MySQL and PostgreSQL. Fairly comfortable with C# and Shell. Where do I find freelancing work, HN?

View on HN

If you want to avoid having to compete with literally everyone Upwork, you have to think like a consultant instead of an employee. If you can take responsibility for the success of the project, that's noteworthy and you'll stand out. This can be how you get your referral system going.

To jumpstart that, you have to build your network. If you are still in university, that's a great position to be in, since you don't have to make money immediately (which is the best negotiation position).

Do things in public that demonstrate competence. For a dev this could include speaking at meetups, contributing to open source, answering questions in tech Slacks or on Hacker News, etc. Meet people and talk to them. Universities have all sorts of ways to do this. Do whatever you are most comfortable doing to meet people.

Stay in touch with the people you meet over email and make known your services without being obnoxious. This will all increase your "luck surface area" - participating in Hacker News has made you known to, for example, me, and anyone else who reads this. The more you do in public, the more people you meet, the more likely you are to find good gigs.

Happy to chat about this more if you have any more specific questions, as it's a topic I've had great interest in as a freelancer myself. Cheers, and best of luck in your freelance quest!

Absolutely agree. Pretty much all the freelance Python coding work I've got has been through mining my existing network. I wouldn't touch UpWork with a bargepole frankly.

Also, you need to be able to offer something unique if you don't want to have to compete on price - so demonstrating competence in a niche is important.

Update your profile here on HN with some contact info, you might get a lead from this post alone.

You could look at zerochaos.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com